Publisher's Synopsis
What do all languages have in common, and what gives each language its individuality? Language typology, which has developed in response to these fundamental questions, is concerned with the construction of theoretical frameworks capable of delimiting the range of possible human language and of capturing constraints on cross-linguistic variation. Language typology is a major concern of all contemporary schools of linguistics, yet a coherent image of the field is difficult to form because of the diversity of theoretical orientations and practical methodologies. This text brings together for the first time original contributions from major schools of typological research, from the Prague School of the Generative Grammar tradition. Leading scholars offer first hand accounts of the theoretical foundations and substantive findings of their particulr school of thought, clarifying basic assumptions which are often not explicitly stated in the literature. The book as a whole provides a survey of the place of individual typology in an international context. It gives an overview of both the underlying unity of, and the differences in, the methods employed in the field.;This work should be of interest to theoretical linguists of all persuasions who are interested in typology; historical linguists; students of the history of linguistics.
